Posted May 28: Three models of student leadership praised, recognized

Not one model of student leadership, but three. This year, University President Peter George is awarding his student leadership awards to three individuals whose exemplary scholarship and service to community provide models of leadership for their fellow students and all members of the McMaster community.

Mary-Melinda Gillies (nursing), Arif Manji (Arts & Science) and Leila Salehi (biology) are this year's recipients of the distinguished awards, given to McMaster students in their graduating year who exemplify leadership.

The students will receive their awards at Spring Convocation.

Mary-Melinda Gillies, Faculty of Health Sciences

Nursing student Mary-Melinda Gillies has been an active participant and leader at McMaster since 1998.

She founded the ABCs of CPR, a volunteer program to teach cardio-pulmonary resuscitation to schoolchildren in Dundas. Through CPR certification sessions, she has raised money for the McMaster Student Outreach Clinic for homeless people in Hamilton. As clothing co-ordinator, Gillies has helped collect more than 10,000 pounds of clothing since fall 2001.

Among her initiatives for fellow students, she founded the Nursing Student Peer Assistance Program in 1999. With a grant from the University's Centre for Leadership in Learning, Gillies also wrote a students' guide to health sciences at McMaster. She served on the McMaster University Nursing Science Society and the Undergraduate Nursing Education Committee, and was editor of the undergraduate nursing newspaper and Web site.

As a volunteer for the Family Support Program of Hamilton Health Sciences, she provided emotional support to children and families of people undergoing surgery. She has also volunteered as a research assistant in the Hamilton Stroke Prevention Clinic pilot project, which has since been awarded long-term provincial funding.

Among her research projects, she has studied aspects of coronary artery bypass surgery. She conducted a community assessment of Six Nations Reserve, and presented the results at the 2000 International Women's Conference in Delhi, India. A member of the Dean's Honour List in the School of Nursing, she has completed a minor in indigenous studies at McMaster.

“She is indeed a leader,” says Carolyn Byrne, School of Nursing. “Throughout her four years here at McMaster she has consistently shown outstanding leadership within the School of Nursing, within the larger University community and in our local community.”

Arif Manji, Arts & Science Program

Arif Manji, Arts & Science Program, receives a President's award to recognize his leadership and achievement in a variety of campus and community activities.

As the founder of Smiling Over Sickness in 2000, Manji enlisted fellow students in volunteering activities and fundraisers at McMaster Children's Hospital. He led the “Shave for a Cure” campaign in which students — including Manji — shaved their heads during a Yates Cup football game to raise more than $15,000 for pediatric cancer research.

Manji has been a student representative with the McMaster Students Union executive, the Student Representative Assembly, and the Society of Arts & Science Students. He has also served on the board of governors ad hoc library review committee, volunteered at the McMaster Student Health Education Centre, and chaired the University Centre Board of Management in planning student services in the new centre. He helped organize the MSU Creating Leadership Amongst Youth conference for high school students.

As vice-president of the McMaster Ismaili Muslim Students Association, Manji organized cultural events on campus. He also performed in the annual McMaster Indian Society Culture Show. Hoping to further intercultural understanding, he organized and spoke at a campus Vigil for Peace after the Sept. 11 tragedy.

Having arrived with the McMaster Scholar's Award, he has subsequently won awards for leadership, community work and achievement, including Ismaili Muslim Canadian Merit Awards, a Miller Thomson Scholarship and a Padgett Business Scholarship. He received the Red Cross Blood Vessel Award after running McMaster's largest residence-wide blood donor clinic.

In 2001 Manji received a Summer Student Life Sciences Award for his work on a leukemia project in a cancer lab at Toronto General Hospital. For the Arts & Science Program, this Dean's Honour List student has worked on a thesis project in sports medicine.

“I'm sure he has a few more hours in the day than the average person. How else could he accomplish so much?” says Lori Diamond, University Centre administrative director.

Leila Salehi, Faculty of Science

Biology student Leila Salehi plans a career in family or community medicine, a career she has already begun through her activities at McMaster and beyond.

Demonstrating her interest in international health, Salehi has collaborated with fellow members of the Student International Health Initiative on writing a public health manual for use in northern India and on raising funds for Doctors Without Borders relief efforts in Afghanistan. She has also helped to design a Peace Through Health course curriculum for health sciences students — a project that was presented at a conference sponsored by the University and the medical journal, The Lancet.

She has undertaken projects to help integrate non-native, English-speaking students on campus by co-ordinating the Speakeasy tutor program through the Centre for Student Development (CSD). Based on her success in helping students improve their English-language skills, the CSD will make that co-ordinator role a permanent volunteer position.

As a volunteer for the Settlement and Integration Services Organization (SISO) in Hamilton, Salehi helped match immigrants and refugees with local community members. She helped collect information and write a grant proposal to expand services for senior immigrants and refugees.

Linking her student and volunteer activities, she led a student initiative within the Ontario Public Interest Research Group to help Hamilton organizations meet immigrant and refugee needs through projects in education, employment, outreach and health. “Her volunteerism directly impacts newcomers in our city and projects the outstanding role played by McMaster students in welcoming new immigrants to the City of Hamilton,” says SISO program co-ordinator Liban Abdi.

Through Volunteers for Peace, Salehi broadened her cultural understanding by working on an international volunteer project at a children's camp in Germany. In 1999 she volunteered at the Montreal Urban Ecology Centre. She hopes to link her studies with her local and international activities in a career in community health, perhaps by working in developing or war-afflicted countries or in community health services for immigrants and refugees.